The Perfect Pantry

Cold-weather soups from the pantry (Recipe: pear and parsnip soup)

Menu for Hope continues through December 25. Remember to bid for our perfect pantry item #UE15, a deluxe gift box of spices and a cookbook donated by The Spice House. See all items up for bid, and bidding instructions, at Chez Pim.

 

In the house where I grew up, soup meant chicken soup.

We had chicken soup when we were sick. I'm still not sure how or why it worked, but it always seemed to make us feel better. (So did Hershey milk chocolate bars, but that's a subject for another day.)

We had chicken soup at Passover, with lumpy-bumpy matzoh balls that my family dubbed "depth charges."

And we had chicken soup -- egg drop, but sometimes wonton soup -- at Chinese restaurants, where we'd go for dinner on Friday nights.

So it's a bit unexpected that I've grown up to be a pretty well-rounded soup maker, and more important, a lover of soups from every culture and cuisine. For cold weather, there's nothing better, and with a well-stocked pantry, you can make soup out of anything, or out of almost nothing.

Mexican oregano (Recipe: Green chile turkey meatballs)

Menu for Hope continues through December 25. Remember to bid for our perfect pantry item #UE15, a deluxe gift box of spices and a cookbook donated by The Spice House. See all items up for bid, and bidding instructions, at Chez Pim.

Every November, a guy named Mark, with three helpers backpacking scary gas-powered leaf blowers, arrives to relocate the leaves that fall from our trees and blanket the lawn.

The leaves get chopped up a bit and piled off to the edge of the woods, where, over time, they'll turn into lovely leaf mold that we mix in with our compost or use as mulch in the herb garden.

On my spice rack, I keep a little jar of chopped up leaves that look very much like the ones outside in the woods. They look the same, but they're oh-so-different.

The leaves in the jar are Mexican oregano.

Not from my yard. Not even from my herb garden. And not really oregano, either.

Other People's Pantries #99

From Rocquie (Sage Trifle), in Asheville, North Carolina:

I love Other People's Pantries. What a great feature -- it brings out the snoop in me. I live in a 1950s mountain bungalow near Asheville.

Peanut oil (Recipe: latkes/potato pancakes)

Menu for Hope continues through December 25. Remember to bid for our perfect pantry item #UE15, a deluxe gift box of spices and a cookbook donated by The Spice House. See all items up for bid, and bidding instructions, at Chez Pim.

Rudolf Diesel had a dream.

When the German inventor and Utopian idealist demonstrated his new engine at the 1900 Paris World Exposition, it ran not on petroleum, but on peanut oil.   

In the perfect world, Diesel believed, renewable biofuels like peanut oil could power farm machinery and automobiles. In our imperfect world, my car still drinks gasoline, but peanut oil powers my frying.

Menu for Hope: Deluxe box of spices from The Spice House, plus a cookbook (Item #UE15). Bid now!

Wahoo! It's opening day for Menu for Hope, now through December 25.

We're so excited to offer bid item #UE15, generously donated by The Spice House in Chicago: a deluxe gift box of ten Ethnic Chicago Neighborhood spice blends, plus a wonderful cookbook, Chicago Cooks.

Menu for Hope is an annual fundraising event created by Pim Techamuanvivit. Five years ago, the devastating tsunami in Southeast Asia inspired her to find a way to help; to date, Menu for Hope has raised nearly $250,000 in support of the UN World Food Programme.

This year Menu for Hope will support a new initiative of the World Food Programme called Purchase for Progress (P4P), which enables smallholder and low-income farmers to supply food to WFP’s global operation. These farmers learn better farming practices and increase their income, which helps their local economies and creates more jobs.

Each December, food bloggers from all over the world join together to offer food-related items for the Menu for Hope. Anyone can buy tickets to bid on gift certificates, home-cooked goodies, cookbooks and more. For every $10 donated, you earn one virtual ticket to bid on an item of your choice. 

*** The Perfect Pantry is offering the ultimate item for pantry lovers: a deluxe box of ten spice blends, plus a Chicago cookbook and culinary history, all donated by The Spice House. Bid item #UE15 can be shipped anywhere in North America. ***